I laughed at the Lorax, "You poor stupid guy!
You never can tell what some people will buy."
--Dr. Seuss

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Rea Irvin and Al Hirschfeld: Harold Ross as Eustace Tilley

Eustace Tilley is the observant dandy who acts as mascot for the New Yorker. He first appeared on the cover of the New Yorker's first issue and he received his euphonious name during the magazine's first year. It was Rea Irvin, the magazine's first art editor, who illustrated that cover. Until fairly recently it has been reproduced more or less annually on the anniversary issue. Eustace Tilley also appears on the magazine's masthead every week and he makes occasional appearances in other illustrations as needed.

Rea Irvin,The New Yorker, February 21, 1925

Harold Ross founded the magazine with Raoul Fleischmann and served as its editor. It was probably only a matter of time before someone portrayed him as Eustace Tilley. A period photo of the young Harold Ross shows his remarkable shock of hair brushed skyward.

Harold Ross as Eustace Tilley? The idea is straightforward enough. It isn't such a great stretch for an illustrator to depict the New Yorker's founding editor Harold Ross as the foppish Eustace Tilley. The first to do this was Irvin himself. The occasion was a parody issue of the magazine dated November 6, 1926, Ross's birthday. It was circulated in-house at the New Yorker as a gift for Ross.

Rea Irvin, under the joking pseudonym Penaninksky, depicts Ross in profile, adopting Eustace Tilley's characteristic perceptive pose. Ross is shown in silhouette because this one-off had to be printed cheaply in black-and-white. The top hat may be Tilley's but the spiky hair clearly belongs to Ross only. Ross was a chain-smoker and thus a cigarette dangles from his lip. He still wears Tilley's nineteenth century waistcoat but his snazzy shirt and tie belong to the Jazz Age. The delicate butterfly of the classic magazine cover is replaced by the not-so-delicate form of Alexander Woollcott as a fedora-clad spider.

Margaret Case Harriman'sThe Vicious Circle: The Story of the Algonquin Round Table was published in 1951, a quarter-century later. When illustrator Al Hirschfeld chose to depict the Round Table's Harold Ross in the guise of Eustace Tilley, he was very likely unaware of Rea Irvin's earlier illustration, which had been circulated only within the New Yorker's offices. Ross of course was older now: his head was rounder, he wore glasses, and his once gravity-defying hair was slicked down.

Hirschfeld depicts Ross with a wheat straw in his mouth, something of an out-of-town rube in high society finery. He is not the first to note Ross's relatively unsophisticated manners which stand in marked contrast to his high social standing at the classy magazine.

Al Hirschfeld "+ R. I.,"Harold Ross from The Vicious Circle: The Story of the Algonquin Round Table, 1951

The scan of the New Yorker's rare parody issue is taken from Magazine History: A Collector's Blog by Steven Lomazow, M.D. He's that rarity: a doctor interested in scarce printed memorabilia! Who ever heard of such a thing?